The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptual role of brief
synthetic consonant--vowel syllables as cues for vowels in children and adults.
Stop--consonant syllables were synthesized in the context of three vowels, [i,
u (open aye)], with durations of 10, 30, or 46 ms. These syllables were
produced with bursts, and contained formant motions and/or formant onset
frequencies appropriate for each stop--consonant place of articulation. Eight
children at each of five age levels, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 11, and a control group of
eight adults were trained to identify the vowel as either /i/, /u/, or /(open
aye)/. The findings showed that children and adults extracted vowel information
at a generally high level from stimuli as brief as one glottal pulse (together
with initial burst). However, significant effects were found for age, vowel,
duration, and transition type. The age effects manifested that even quantal
vowels were not identified in an adult-like manner by young children. The
duration and transition-type effects revealed that vowel perception was
sometimes better for longer syllables with moving formant transitions. Overall,
these perceptual findings indicate that syllable identification is more salient
in adults than children. [Work supported by NIH, DC00464.]